Suburban Chicago Man Gets Five Years for Stealing Over $10 Million in Interstate Shipments

CHICAGO — A federal judge sentenced suburban Chicago resident David M. Dudzinski to 60 months in prison on May 8, 2026, for stealing more than $10 million in merchandise from interstate shipments over several years.

The sentence covers losses totaling $10,057,000 from cargo thefts that targeted shipments moving across state lines. Dudzinski, 64, of Arlington Heights, Illinois, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The case was prosecuted as part of the Department of Justice’s Trade Fraud Task Force.

The operational change is now complete: Dudzinski must serve the full five-year term followed by three years of supervised release. He faces immediate payment of $10,057,000 in combined restitution to victims and forfeiture to the government. Prior to sentencing he remained free on bond; the new state is immediate incarceration at a Bureau of Prisons facility to be designated.

Downstream effects include mandatory collection efforts by the Justice Department to recover the $10 million-plus sum, which will be directed first to affected shippers and carriers. The Trade Fraud Task Force will log the case as a completed prosecution, potentially shifting investigative resources to open cargo-theft matters.

Federal sentencing data will now reflect this outcome in annual reports to Congress on interstate theft volumes. Shippers and logistics firms that participate in task-force information sharing gain one additional resolved case that validates the multi-agency approach.

This marks the latest conviction obtained through the Trade Fraud Task Force, which coordinates efforts among federal prosecutors, Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to target organized cargo theft. The task force has pursued similar interstate shipment cases in multiple districts in recent years, producing sentences that emphasize full restitution alongside prison time.

The primary source for this article is the U.S. Department of Justice press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.